


I've Got the Will to Drive Myself Sleepless

by cricket_aria



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Character A pining after fling while incorrectly assuming B doesn't want more, F/M, Insomnia, Pre-Suicide Mission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:55:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26414524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricket_aria/pseuds/cricket_aria
Summary: If Garrus can't sleep it's only because human beds weren't made for human bodies. It has nothing to do with the possibility that he's spent the entire time they've known each other slowly falling in love with the woman who thinks they've only gone to bed with each other for stress relief.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39
Collections: pine4pine 2020





	I've Got the Will to Drive Myself Sleepless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ziskandra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziskandra/gifts).



The bed was too soft.

Garrus tried to convince himself that that was the only thing keeping him from sleeping. The bed was too soft, made for bodies that had evolved on one of the gentler homeworlds in the galaxy instead of one that blasted them with endless radiation stronger than most other species could handle. His body sank into it in weird ways, his back and neck twisting in ways that we’re libel to leave them in the _best_ state for marching into a probably suicide mission the next day. Most people would have trouble sleeping in that situation.

(Not her. She was sprawled on her stomach half on top of him, almost sideways on the bed, her chest plastered against his, one arm stretched up beside his head. The height his carapace pushed him from the bed meant that lying on him left her back in an arch that wouldn’t have looked out of place on an asari dancer, a level of flexibility that the vids he’d studied for that night suggested wasn’t customary for most humans or something they’d hold for long, but she was sleeping like she was in total comfort and didn’t have a care in the world.)

(But he was only awake because of the bed, not because he was hyper-focused on how she was sleeping. Not because thinking the word ‘flexibility’ suddenly turned his mind into a minefield of associated images that burst across it, trying to tempt him to dwell on them instead of finally drifting off.)

If there was any other reason he couldn’t sleep the mission itself had to be it. Garrus was pretty sure that he, Tali, and Joker were the only members of the crew who would be walking into it expecting to walk back out again. They were the only ones who’d traveled with Shepard long enough to have absolute faith that if lead them into a place then she would tear the heavens themselves apart to see that they made it out again, Akuze a scar in her mind that still seeped when it was prodded, a wound he’d only recently come to fully understand. If given the choice she’d die to save any one of the people who followed her, the reason she’d set course for the Omega 4 Relay the moment they’d come back to find the ship empty of anyone but Joker without giving them even a moment more prep time.

(And that was another thought he could not think about too hard. He could not think of the hole that had been torn in the universe for two long years, and how easily it could be reopened in under a day. He wasn’t caught in a constant state of low-grade horror as they got closer and closer to whatever was waiting at the other end of the Relay, and the knowledge that if it came down to it she would unhesitatingly shove herself between any of them and whatever monsters the Collectors might have waiting. He wasn’t almost ill at the thought of how easily he could be the one she took that blow for, with how often he was one of the ones she chose to keep by her side going into a fight.)

Back pain and pre-battle nerves were both good reasons to have trouble sleeping, and he firmly told himself that they were the only reasons for his insomnia. Because, if they weren’t…

If they weren’t then he had made a terrible mistake in agreeing to that night as a chance to blow-off steam. In just going along with her joking come-ons and saying nothing about how the important part of fraternization, as she’d consider it, on Turian ships was that neither side was looking for more than an easy way to burn of some tension, and could walk away with no ties and no regrets.

If he had been on a Turian ship, if she had been the scout he’d told her about come back for another round, he wouldn’t have kept raising his hands to frown at the red blood (wouldn’t have had _red_ blood) caught under his talons and felt like he deserved to be beaten around the ring nine more times over it. Any worry about the fact that he’d accidentally dug in too hard to a body that wasn’t built to be scoured that way would have been wiped away by the way she’d arched into it moaning “ _Garrus_ ” and “God, yes,” and a string of garbled sounds that his translator implant had given up on dealing with. The red glow gleaming from her back where the Cerberus tech built into her body could now be seen glowing through the slices in her skin wouldn’t have felt like a recrimination. 

He was her stress relief. He was as good at it as a few incredibly awkward question and answer sessions with Mordin and Chakwas and a series of vids that left his extranet history mortifying if anyone else ever saw it—which meant he planned to never be alone with Liara _again_ , because who could even say what all those Shadow Brokery fingers had gotten themselves into and the woman knew him well enough to know exactly how to make him squirm with anything she might seen—had been able to make him, and a few unintentional injuries aside he’d dare to say something had indeed finally gone right. That was what she’d wanted, that was what she’d invited him up there for, and that was the only thing he had the right to ask her for in return.

So he focused on the kinks in his joints. He focused on their possible imminent deaths. He focused on how likely it might be that Kasumi or, heaven forbid, _Tali_ might have hacked his Omni-tool at any point to see that tell-tale history. He focused on any of the not completely idiotic reasons he could have to still be up.

And he did not for a moment let himself focus on the idea that he could have been stupid enough to just be a one-night stand for a woman he’d probably first fallen a little in love with the moment she’d shown up with a lead that might finally take down Saren back when he was in C-Sec, and who’d spent all that time since giving him a near-constant string of reasons to fall a little deeper every time they spoke.

Because if he had… Well, that would probably be the most idiotic move he’d ever made.

The bed was too soft.

That’s all it was.


End file.
